


Hell of a Price

by MermaidMarie



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, M/M, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-02-08 10:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21474433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidMarie/pseuds/MermaidMarie
Summary: In which Season 4 Quentin travels back in time to the beginning of the key quest, to stop them from ever getting magic back in the first place.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 19
Kudos: 128





	1. Back to the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is a contrived premise. I'm running with it anyway.

_Tick tick tick tick tick—_

_The sound—_

_The sound of a clock—_

_Time bending and twisting and breaking—_

_The hours and days and minutes folding in on themselves—_

_Watch the minute hand spin, watch the second hand freeze—_

_Watch the sun set and rise and rise and rise—_

So the bad luck was gone—

It was as safe as it was ever going to be to check the message and find out whether his dad died.

“But that’s not what’s really stopping you.”

Quentin knew that his dad was dead. He didn’t need to listen to his mom’s message to _know. _He couldn’t put into words what was stopping him.

He tried anyway.

“The other me… Brian.” Those memories—that _life_. “His dad died when he was a kid. He was too little to even understand. All of his problems were like that. No sharp edges.”

_No sharp edges. _Brian’s life had been… Boring, honestly. Some cookie-cutter, mundane life. He was a regular at a coffee shop. He had a job he liked well enough. He read the paper in the morning. Brian was… Just some _guy_. He didn’t have adventures or quests—he didn’t want them, either.

He was happy. Content. Satisfied with who he was and where he was.

Quentin kind of felt like he’d ruined that.

He met Julia’s gaze. “Look at us. We paid a hell of a fucking price.” He felt an unnamed emotion boiling under his skin—not quite anger, not quite sadness. Something like regret—like betrayal. Like the first moment when you’re a kid and you learn that life is unfair and that people won’t always play by the rules. “You gave up being a goddess. I gave up my _father_. What did we get in return?”

“Magic is back,” Julia replied. Her voice was almost gentle, like she was offering a comfort.

Quentin half-laughed, shaking his head. “Not in the way we wanted.” He paused, his mind going through every awful moment of this past year. And how little it all amounted to. They lost so much to get this fucked up world. “How are you not furious?”

“Because for almost everyone, the world is a little brighter. Even if they never know why.” Julia paused, taking a short breath. “I hate the Library for what they did. But my part in it—I knew what it cost. And I’d do it again.”

And maybe to her, Quentin though, it really was that simple. Maybe the minute light added into the world was enough to make it all worth it to her.

A silence hung between them in the dim lighting of that big, empty room. The air around Quentin felt heavy with the regret he felt.

Julia studied his face for a moment, and Quentin felt like he needed to hide.

“But you wouldn’t.”

She said it like she was just realizing its truth.

Quentin bit the inside of his cheek, trying to stifle a sigh. He didn’t want to get into it. There was too fucking much to cover. He could cycle through the consequences in his mind for hours. He did it every night when he tried to sleep.

He brought a hand to his face, rubbing at his eye and forehead.

“Will you just sit here for a minute?” he asked, picking up his phone. It felt heavy and cold in his palm.

“Yeah,” Julia replied softly. She leaned forward.

Quentin could feel her eyes on him as he hit play and listened to the voicemail.

And there it was.

Another heavy thing to tip the scales.

That was the memory that kept running through Quentin’s mind as he sat on the staircase, staring vacantly into his drink. It was over. They’d taken their luck and their dedication and their insistence that they would always be able to figure out as far as it would all go. There was nothing left to try.

It _was_ a hell of price, getting magic back. Quentin decided it wasn’t fucking worth it. Magic was _not _worth all this. If he could do it all over again, he would. Fuck, good riddance to magic. What the hell was it all for anyway?

He came back to _this. _His dad dead. Eliot possessed. Alice a traitor. Julia powerless. Margo dealing with whatever bullshit in Fillory.

His life before magic, it wasn’t _that _bad. So what he was a depressed super-nerd? So what he barely had any real friends? So what he felt like he was useless and stupid and a burden?

It was better than whatever the world had become since.

And now they were here.

There was nothing left.

No keys left to find, no stones, no secrets plans, no spells powerful enough. There was no deus ex machina this time. They’d lost.

And Quentin knew it. He’d known it a while, he supposed. He’d just been clinging to the hope that they could come back from this. His hope had paid off before. It had been _enough _before.

But not this time.

This time was different. They didn’t have Eliot. They didn’t _really _have Margo. They didn’t really have Alice, either. They didn’t have enough magic.

It was _over. _

No matter what Julia said.

_This isn’t over, _she’d said, a flicker of desperation in her tone.

Maybe she needed to see him believe in what they were doing, but he couldn’t do it. It was hopeless.

So when a distraction came knocking at the door, pulling Julia away from where she’d been hovering over him with that familiar air of concern echoing off of her, Quentin bolted. The moment he could leave without causing a scene, he was gone.

Because it was hopeless, here. There was nothing left they could do to fix it this time.

_It’s not over, _Julia had said.

And, well, Quentin disagreed. It _was _over. Because their plans had failed, they had lost, everything was over.

There was one thing left he could do.

He just couldn’t do it _here, _in this place.

And in this time.

Time magic was…

Well, it was pretty fucking complicated, actually. And Quentin didn’t have a whole lot of experience with it, beyond the time travel scenarios he’d been dropped into and the time loops he’d been trapped in. It was, without a doubt, way outside of the realm of what he was used to.

He’d never really tried time magic much. He’d never had a reason to.

Luckily for him, magic came from pain. And Quentin had a lot of fucking pain to draw from.

If he managed to get it right—

He _should_ end up right at the beginning of the key quest.

_Tick tick tick tick tick tick—_

“Q. I think this is it. _The Tale of the Seven Keys.” _Julia handed him the book. “No author. I mean—I can _feel _something coming off of it.”

She sat down in front of him, leaning forward.

Quentin, with care, opened the book, his fingertips grazing gently across the pages. He felt something coming off of it, too.

Past the first chapter, the pages were blank. And _odd. _Quentin studied the paper.

“Interesting,” he said.

“Yeah, if by interesting, you mean blank, sure,” Julia replied, a note of amusement in her tone.

“Quests never give away the farm,” Quentin said. “You gotta earn everything.”

He paused, his own words hitting him. He looked up at Julia, a strange feeling in his chest.

“Jules, this is our quest,” he said.

_Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick—_

_The rapid sound of a clock, fast-forwarded, or maybe rewound—_

_A sense of urgency, a sense of impending catastrophe—_

_Ticktickticktickticktickticktick—_


	2. Without Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why I so suddenly got the urge to write this again, but here I am. I guess I have not abandoned this premise.

It happened kind of all at once, Quentin being dropped back to the beginning. Time magic was strange—he was never sure how it worked. It was a miracle he managed to get it right.

The experience was disorienting. He had to take a minute to catch his breath.

Luckily for him, it was timed just right—Julia interpreted his sudden change as a note of excitement over the quest.

“Our _quest?” _Julia said, her voice soft.

Quentin blinked rapidly, closing the book abruptly. He just barely stopped himself from throwing it to the ground.

_Play it cool, _he told himself. Julia wouldn’t understand—if she had the choice, she’d pay the price for magic again. She wouldn’t get why it wasn’t worth it. Quentin couldn’t let her know what he was doing. Couldn’t let her know there was anything different.

He cleared his throat.

“Our—our quest,” he repeated, trying to manufacture some reverence in his voice.

As though to prove his point, Julia broke out in a bright smile. “We can bring magic back,” she said, the reverence in her voice sincere.

Quentin glanced away. “Let’s not—um. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Julia hit his leg. “Oh, come on. You know us. We’ll figure it out.”

_Not if I can help it. _

“I’m just saying—we should, uh, we shouldn’t get too invested just yet. Maybe it’s not even possible to bring magic back, yknow?” He said it as casually as he could, tapping his thumb against the spine of the book.

“Q,” Julia replied, lowering her voice. She furrowed her brow, looking concerned. “Don’t talk like that.”

He looked at her, wishing he could tell her the truth. Wishing he didn’t have to do this alone. “I mean. Would that be so bad?”

Julia blinked at him, her mouth falling open a little.

He sighed, frowning and looking down at the pavement. “Don’t—don’t look at me like that. I just mean… It’s not that bad. Without magic. We’re doing okay. Right? This… isn’t that bad.”

“It’s not—it’s just—” Julia tried. She cut off, shaking her head. “Listen, at the party the other night? I mean, you should’ve _heard _Josh talk.”

Quentin glanced up at her, swallowing. A little desperate for her to just say _oh, you’re right, the world without magic is perfectly adequate and I’m fine with this. _

“I’m just saying—”

“What he said… _He belonged anywhere, because he was a Magician. _I mean. Fuck, Q. _That’s _what we lost.” Julia leaned forward, studying Quentin’s eyes intently. She looked so _earnest, _so determined. Like nothing in this timeline or the next could shake her. “That’s what we’re trying to get back.”

Quentin shut his mouth, pressing his lips together. There was no way he could explain it, not to Julia. Not to anyone, really. They didn’t _know_. They didn’t know that a world without magic was—well, it was a safer world.

Maybe it wasn’t as bright. Maybe it wasn’t full of possibility and freedom and belonging, not in the same way. Maybe there was a lot that they’d lost, maybe the world would feel incomplete and slightly broken, maybe everything was a little bit harder, a little bit colder, a little bit sadder.

But everyone was managing. It had to be enough.

Wasn’t it _enough?_

_We paid a hell of a fucking price, to lose this peace. _

“No, you’re right,” Quentin replied. “I get it.”

And he did. They were both trying to protect their worlds, in their own ways.

“Besides, the quest only just started,” Julia added, straightening up and smiling. “We’ve got this.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said softly. He ran a finger down the spine of the book. “Who knows?”

There wasn’t much that Quentin could do when it came to the first key—that was, after all, in Fillory. As Julia sent rabbits to Eliot to tell him what the first chapter said, Quentin flipped through the pages again.

So a lot had happened since the beginning of the key quest—

If Quentin was honest with himself, he didn’t remember all that much about how they got the second key. Was that—was the second key the truth key? It must’ve been. The first key was… What, the illusion key? Fuck, he should’ve made notes or something. Forgive him if he didn’t fucking realize there’d be a test.

Forgive him, too, for not realizing just how much bullshit would happen. He never would’ve anticipated having _so much _happen that what he’d thought was the quest of his life would wind up being just one step in the downward spiral that was their entire world.

The third key—_that, _Quentin remembered quite vividly. The fourth key, too, was burned in his mind forever.

The second key, not so much.

Julia rejoined Quentin and Josh after sending the last rabbit, telling Quentin to read that first chapter out loud again.

So Quentin did.

He sort of hated it. He sort of hated seeing all these glimpses into the future that hadn’t happened yet—the future he was trying to prevent. The story with the witch, the knight, the daughter. The quest, the seven keys, the prison. _The Castle at the End of the World. _

He never wanted to see that castle again. He didn’t want _any of them _to see that fucking castle, that place where Alice had betrayed them, where Julia had given up her powers, where the monster had escaped and taken Eliot.

He finished reading the chapter, hoping that his voice hadn’t been shaking. Or, at least, hoping that if it _had _been shaking, Julia and Josh thought it was from excitement rather than dread.

“So there’s nothing after that page, huh?” Josh said from where he sat on the floor, his bong on the table in front of him.

“Nope,” Quentin said with a sigh, shutting the book. “That’s it.”

“Helpful.”

“It’s a quest.”

“Yeah, but it’d be nice to have more detailed idea of what to do next.”

“Quests can’t be easy,” Quentin replied, “or they wouldn’t be quests. They’d just be, like, Ikea instructions.”

“Ikea instructions aren’t easy.”

“Right, that was the takeaway I was going for.”

“I’m just saying, have you tried to put together Ikea furniture? Unreal. They just have, like, vague pictures. Now _that’s _a quest.”

Quentin cracked a smile, glancing over at Josh.

“Then I guess we can be glad we have words at least?” Quentin replied.

Josh pointed, grinning. “New benchmark for doable quests: is it easier than Ikea instructions?”

“Focus, guys,” Julia said, though she sounded amused.

Quentin waved her off slightly, sighing.

“Eliot’s got this one,” he said, pushing his hair back from his face. He swallowed, clenching his jaw. He was feeling antsy, just thinking about how Eliot was out there, _himself. _It had been a long time since Quentin had seen Eliot’s eyes with _Eliot _behind them.

“We should be there with him,” Julia said. She leaned forward, plucking the map of Fillory from the table.

“Hell yeah, we should.” Josh leaned his arm against the table. “Quests are not a solo op.”

Quentin coughed, wringing his hands a little. He wanted to see Eliot. He wasn’t sure how. “Yeah, well. He’s in Fillory. Not sure how you think we’re supposed to get there.”

Josh gestured towards the grandfather clock. “We’ve got the portal.”

Quentin sighed. “But no magic.”

“Julia’s got magic,” Josh replied.

That sent a spike of panic down Quentin’s spine. Julia _did _have magic—just the first inklings of her goddess powers, the bare echo of what she could become. Quentin couldn’t help but feel like it was dangerous. Like Julia alone could get magic back at some point, and Quentin would fail to protect his friends yet again.

“Not enough,” Quentin said dismissively. “And not anything we can use.”

“Nice, Q,” Julia said, her voice sharp.

Quentin shot her a look. He felt a little guilty about his tone, but… “Am I wrong?”

Julia turned away from him pointedly to talk to Josh. “I can’t do _much_,” she said, softer. “And what I _can _do, it’s just, like… Party tricks. I can’t power something like that.”

Josh glanced in between them. “So… How do we power the clock?”

“No idea,” Quentin said quickly.

“There’s gotta be something we can do.”

Julia looked up at Quentin, her brow furrowed. “C’mon, Q. Anything?”

Quentin shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe getting the clock wasn’t worth it.”

_Eliot Eliot Eliot… _

Josh glanced over at the clock. “It’s _something.” _

“So, what, we’re just supposed to send bunnies back and forth? How are we going to deal with Eliot and Margo being in Fillory here?” Julia leaned back against the couch.

Quentin glanced at the clock. So, okay, he came back to mess with the key quest. He came back to stop them from succeeding at getting magic back. But this was just one thing, right? Just one of the first steps. And it was _Eliot… _

_Fuck. _

So maybe his plan to sabotage the key quest could be delayed a little.

“Okay, I, uh—” Quentin started, his voice a little strained. “I might have one, um. One idea.”

“Q?”

“Mayakovsky.”

Julia’s eyes widened. _“Yes.” _

Josh groaned. “Oh, come on. Can’t the solution be something I don’t wanna punch in the face?”

“Trust me, I’m with you there, but… He had magic batteries in Brakebills South,” Quentin said.

“Alright, fine, whatever. So where do we find him?” Josh said.

Julia glanced up at Quentin with a little shrug. “I mean, magic might be dead, but Google isn’t.”

Quentin was struggling to remember how they’d found Mayakovsky, how they’d managed to power the clock enough for Eliot to come back through—really, he was struggling to remember every part of the key quest that happened before the mosaic.

There was an entire lifetime of memories separating him from this particular part of the quest. It felt so monumentally distant.

Maybe his whole plan had been a little flawed. Maybe he’d fuck up the quest just by virtue of not knowing what the hell he was doing, rather than any active trying on his part.

So he was struggling to remember, until—

“Guys?” Josh called. “Got something here.”

“Hedge witch bar?” Julia said, leaning forward to look at the tattoos. “Where’d you find this?”

“YouTube. It was just posted. Check this out.” Josh hit play.

Quentin watched the video, the familiarity of it making him sigh heavily. The bear destroying the bar. Well, now he remembered _that, _at least. That was Mayakovsky alright.

“What’s your, uh—what’s your point?” Julia said hesitantly to Josh.

He paused the video. “Point one—Mayakovsky’s first name is Mischa, that’s what that girl calls the bear. Point two—the symbol of Russia, a brown bear. Point three—recognize that?”

“What is it?”

Quentin glanced at Julia. “It’s uh, it’s Mayakovsky’s pendant.”

“And, possibly most compelling, point four,” Josh said, hitting play again. The bear, destroying the bar. Because Mayakovsky was an absolute tool.

“That bear’s a dick,” Quentin agreed.

It was Julia’s idea to call Kady.

Which was precisely when Quentin remembered _Penny. _

Right. There was another thing that he could maybe try to fix. Honestly, Quentin felt a little bad that he hadn’t thought about the fact that Penny had _died _in the key quest, but like. He had a lot going on; there was really only so much he could keep track of.

So Julia got Kady there to get them to that bar—really, Quentin was _trying _to remember where the bar had been but, well. He never thought it would be important information again.

Kady watched the video through narrowed eyes, frowning at it. Quentin kept studying her face, trying to get a read on her expression.

Despite everything they’d all been through together, Quentin knew close to nothing about Kady, he realized.

Julia paused the video when she was done explaining, staring at Kady with intent, hopeful eyes.

Kady shook her head. “So, wait, Mayakovsky uses the last drops of magic anywhere for a bar trick?”

Quentin couldn’t help but notice that Kady was directing it at _him, _rather than meeting Julia’s gaze.

“Or someone did it to him,” Quentin replied.

“Or the bear could just be a bear,” Kady replied, not sounding particularly impressed.

“I’m pretty sure it’s him, actually,” Quentin half-muttered to himself.

“Look, do you recognize this place?” Julia piped in.

Kady let out a small, impatient scoff before finally turning fully to look at Julia.

“We just have to find the hedge witch bar,” Quentin interjected. He needed to speed this along.

Kady kept her eyes on Julia. “You said you had something else to show me?”

Julia glanced at Quentin before bringing her hand up. Sparks flew from her fingertips.

Quentin held his breath. Josh’s eyes went wide again, like he was seeing Julia’s magic for the first time, an awed smile growing on his face. Next to him, Kady’s jaw dropped and her eyelids fluttered slightly. They both looked so captivated, almost desperate.

It was what magic did to people, Quentin supposed.

For his part, he just kept feeling that quiet, lurking dread. Any magic at all seemed like too much.

“Wait—wha—_how?” _Kady stammered out.

“I don’t know,” Julia said. “But it’s all I can do, which is almost worse than nothing at all.”

Something in the way she said that made Quentin chest tighten.

He could feel all of their frustration, all of their tentative hope. It was bare on all their faces—Josh’s awe, Kady’s hunger, Julia’s desperation. This meant so much to them.

Quentin wondered if he was finally starting to understand how Alice felt, in those moments before she destroyed the keys.

He shoved the thought away. “We just need to get Julia one of those batteries.”

“We could help Penny,” Julia said. “Mayakovsky was in a Hedge bar. Can you get us in?”

Kady shot Julia an icy look, eyes narrowed. “Recent history hasn’t done much for your credibility. Why should I help you?”

Quentin looked at Kady, clenching his jaw. “I want to help Penny, too,” he said, sincerely. He _did. _

“Fuck you,” Kady bit out. 

“Whatever you think of me, whatever you think of Julia—” Quentin started, talking fast. He cut off, taking a breath. “I don’t want Penny to die any more than you do, and this—this might be his only fucking chance, so how about you help us find that bar?”

Kady scoffed, turning away.

“Look, _please_. Just get us in.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Kady—” Julia said, her voice smaller.

“Trust us or don’t, it doesn’t matter,” Quentin interrupted. “This is Penny’s _life. _Face it, this is what we’ve got here.”

Kady narrowed her eyes at Quentin. “Why do you care all of a sudden?”

Quentin barely resisted rolling his eyes. “I don’t care _all of a sudden. _I always cared. But look—this hasn’t been fucking easy for anyone. Eliot and Margo are stranded in Fillory. Alice is—wherever Alice is. Caring isn’t enough here. This is the first viable way to help Penny, alright?”

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t go find the batteries and figure this out on my own,” Kady said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Quentin stared back at her hard, unflinching. “If you want to risk Penny’s life over your pride, be my fucking guest. You _know _our best shot is if we work together.”

“Fuck you, Coldwater.”

“So tell me I’m wrong, then.”

“You know, we could, um, we could, like, dial back the hostility here,” Josh interjected carefully.

Kady blinked first.

“Whatever. Fine. For Penny, I’ll do it.” She turned to Julia. “This _doesn’t _mean we’re cool.”

“Fine,” Julia said faintly. “Fine, whatever.”

So Kady got them to the bar, and she talked to her hedge friends there.

Quentin could not for the life of him remember anything about this entire situation. He was only half-listening as Kady and the bartender talked. Sort of because it was hard to listen to people missing magic, when Quentin was actively hoping to never get it back.

He wanted everyone to understand that magic wasn’t worth it, but how could he explain that?

Yeah. He was really getting where Alice had been coming from when she destroyed the keys. He always wondered why she’d never said anything, why she’d never _talked _about being unsure that they should save magic at all, but now he got it.

You couldn’t tell people who were desperately missing magic that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

It wasn’t until the guy mentioned _the girl Mayakovsky had been with _that Quentin actually remembered something about this part of the quest.

_Right. _

Emily.

Almost instantly, he felt like a bad person, a little bit, for completely forgetting about Emily Greenstreet’s involvement in this whole mess. He—well. He forgot about her more often than he’d want to admit.

In his defense, he was pretty sure she didn’t think about him much either.

“Oh,” Emily said when she opened the door. “It’s you.”

Quentin tried half-heartedly to offer a smile. “Hey,” he said gently.

“What are, um… What are you doing here?”

“Look, I don’t—honestly, I just need you to tell me about Maykovsky,” he said.

Emily’s eyes widened. “How did you—”

“Not important. He got turned into a bear. How?” Quentin didn’t really _want _to be brusque with her, but he desperately didn’t want to be there.

“Um—I don’t… I don’t know.” She was swaying on her feet a little, clinging to the doorway. “There was… a woman. At the bar. She and Mischa… argued. About something. I was drunk, I went to the bathroom, and… _poof, _my husband was a bear.”

_Husband. _Jesus.

“A woman,” Quentin echoed.

A woman. With magic batteries. A woman, arguing with Mayakovsky, getting the magic from him and turning him into a bear with it. A woman—who was…? Who could be…?

Oh. Oh, fuck.

Well, _now_, Quentin fucking _remembered. _

“Shit, I’m so sorry, Emily, I have to go,” Quentin said.

He rushed out of there before Emily could say anything.

“Q, you’re gonna have to explain, like, _something,” _Julia said, trailing after him.

“Honestly, I really fucking can’t,” he said, breathless, walking fast.

“Quentin, what the hell did she _say?” _Kady asked.

How was Quentin going to explain how he knew—

“Uh, a woman. A female magician.” He let out half a laugh. How was he supposed to do this? How could he explain how he knew what he knew? And how was he supposed to help anyone? And _how _was he supposed to hold himself together? “Look, I just know we have to get to the Old Post Office. The one on 58th.”

“Do we need to _run _there?” Josh said, slightly plaintively.

“Yes,” Quentin said firmly, not slowing down.

“Q, you’re being weird,” Julia said, glancing up at him as she matched his speed.

“This whole fucking thing is weird,” he muttered.

“Take a breath—what’s wrong?”

“Look, just trust me, okay?” he said.

“Always,” she replied easily. “But you’re kinda freaking me out.”

“Yeah, well,” he said. Not elaborating. What could he say? 

She huffed, but she didn’t press the issue. He could see her glancing up at him in his periphery every few seconds, like she was trying to keep an eye on him in case he imploded. He couldn’t worry about that. He couldn’t worry about whether she was getting concerned or suspicious or whatever.

He could figure out how to explain himself afterwards.

When they got to the post office, Quentin stopped abruptly, trying to catch his breath.

He could feel all their eyes on him, but he didn’t say anything for a few moments.

There was no crowd gathered, not yet. So they’d made it there before…

“You guys stay out here,” he murmured to them. “Keep an eye out for… anything weird. Just—I’ll be right back.”

“Quentin—” Julia started.

But he was already heading inside, not looking back. Hoping his tone conveyed how important it was that they stay out there.

It was possible that they’d made it to the building before Lipson, in which case, hopefully Josh, or maybe Kady, would recognize her when she showed up and catch her off guard, stopping her before she went inside. It was also possible that she was already in the building, maybe even on the roof, and just hadn’t drawn any attention yet.

Quentin hurried up the stairs.

When he made it to the roof, Lipson was already there, but she wasn’t anywhere near the edge. She was just standing off to the side of the door to the staircase, her arms limp at her sides, staring at the view.

“Professor Lipson?” Quentin said softly.

She turned sharply, her eyes wide with shock.

“Quentin?” she replied, her tone disbelieving. “What are you—”

“Just following the magic,” he said, keeping his voice light. He walked over, ducking his head a little, and stood beside her. “The view from here is nice.”

She let out a quiet, empty laugh. “Yeah. Nice.”

He swallowed, keeping his gaze forward. “I know what you’re doing up here.”

“Do you now,” she replied flatly.

He nodded slightly. “And I get it. I really do. The world… it’s hard to get used to this.”

“It’s gone,” she said. “Magic is dead, it’s gone. There’s nothing left.”

Her voice was low and shaky. Empty in a way that Quentin found all too familiar. He knew what it was like, to feel like there was nothing left. To feel like the whole world was worth giving up on.

“Magic isn’t the only thing that matters,” he said.

“Isn’t it, though?” Lipson said with a humorless laugh.

“No,” Quentin insisted. He turned to her. She didn’t meet his gaze. “Look, I—I _know, _okay? I know. It feels like the world is ending, I _get _it.”

“The world _is _ending,” Lipson said, some heat in her tone.

“That world, maybe. And it hurts, and it _sucks, _and it’s hard. We didn’t know what we had, and then we lost it, and we have to live with that.” He took a breath. Steeled himself. Tried to remember everything he’d told himself, before he ever knew magic was real. Everything that kept him holding on. “But that’s the thing—we _have _to live with that. Because we can learn how to, and we owe it to ourselves to figure that out. Magic is gone, yeah, but it was _not _all we ever had. The world without it is still _here. _We can’t—we can’t just give up on everything that’s left.”

Lipson brought the magic battery up to her chest, holding it close.

“This _was_ everything that was left,” she said, barely audibly. “I used it all up, and now there’s nothing.”

Quentin sighed, hanging his head.

“You did something beautiful with that last bits of magic that were left. You gave people happiness, you gave them wonder, you gave them connection.” He fidgeted a little with his hands. “And that’s a beautiful way for magic to end. And now, there are other ways to find happiness and wonder and connection, because magic was never all we had going for us. That’s what comes next—we find out what else works. What else we have that’s worth sticking around for. We can always find something.”

“How can you feel anything other than empty?” Lipson said, her voice cracking. She clutched the battery harder.

“Because I _know _that magic is just one thing,” he said. “And it hurt as many people as it helped, and it was important while we had it, but important things _end _sometimes. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, to live without it. I’m just saying that it’s worth it to try.”

Lipson didn’t say anything for a few long, hollow moments. Quentin didn’t know if he’d said enough. If he’d said it right. If his words meant anything.

“You never talked this much in class,” Lipson said finally, her voice just a little clearer.

Quentin cracked a smile. “Will you come back down with me?”

Lipson took a breath. A shaky, unsteady breath, but it was enough.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, okay.”


End file.
